14 DAY TRIAL // Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced that a new stable version of Zenwalk Linux Live distribution, 7.4, is now available for download.
Zenwalk aims to be a really fast distribution and this is done through many optimization levels, starting with the kernel and ending with the applications and the desktop itself. It's based on Slackware and it's supposed to be extremely fast and easy to use.
The 7.4 version has been out for a few months, but this is a Live release, which means that users can finally test it without having to install it.
“This is the first Zenwalk Live version that is NOT utillizing an AUFS enabled kernel but instead running unionfs in userspace via fuse on an unmodified Slackware generic kernel! Same as in Zenwalk Live 7.2 I decided to feature PAE for supporting more than 4 GB RAM on 32bit, but as a down side Zenwalk Live will not run on Pentium M (which lacks PAE support).”
“Also in order to support additional locales and some extra content the ISO does not fits on a CD-ROM anymore, so same as last time it's a DVD-ROM ISO release again,” reads the official announcement.
The developer also explained that he made a series of very important modifications. The base system now features Xfce as a separate live module. This means that users will be able to run the Zenwalk Live Fluxbox Edition without Xfce.
Also, Zenwalk features full support for the Japanese language, the anthy conversion engine, LibreOffice 4.1.3, GIMP 1.8.6, Xfce 4.12GIT, Thunderbird 25.0.1, and Linux kernel 3.10.20. This is not exactly the latest version of the Linux kernel, but it's considered very stable and it's long-term support.
Zenwalk is also following the current trend of the Linux distributions that have started to phase out the 32-bit version of the OS. It has turned into a very old architecture, and the developers are beginning to realize that it's too much work and there are fewer and fewer users out there who require a 32-bit release.
This version comes with 32-bit support and it can use 4 GB RAM because it also features PAE. This also means that users with Pentium M processors will not be able to run this Linux distribution.
A complete list of new features and changes can be found in the official announcement. You can download Zenwalk Linux Live 7.4 right now from Softpedia.